Lara Rhame Quotes (88 Quotes)

That's one of the reasons the dollar came off at the end of last week, ... and could come off even more on Wednesday, when Greenspan speaks. He could be setting the foundation for a more range-bound trade for this coming quarter.

Even if the Fed got very concerned about these headwinds -- business investment, consumer confidence, stock market frailty -- they'd be asking themselves if cutting another 25 basis points one-quarter percentage point would do any good whatsoever. That I seriously question.

We are seeing a slowdown, but we're not necessarily seeing a slow economy, ... The Fed is still going to be on alert for inflation, and we're going to have to wait and see more evidence before we can conclude that it isn't a threat.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Fed did stick with the positive and ignore the negative, but I can't imagine them taking out the statement in their August policy announcement that says 'labor market indicators are mixed,' ... If they are positive, they still have to retain at least that one negative.

Almost always the knee-jerk reaction in the markets to positive news on reforms is yen positive. People look at reform as being a positive thing for Japan, one day, hopefully.

Oil prices are volatile enough that you can't focus on one day's move. But later in the year, a combination of robust global economic recovery and tension in the Middle East are really ingredients for a big spike in oil prices, and that can truly spell disaster for an economy.

This is the Fed's preferred measure of inflation...and might have markets pricing in a more aggressive Fed,

This is undeniably good news. The crucial question going forward is going to be if the rise in confidence is reflected in more spending on the part of the consumer, or if it's simply a patriotic rally.

I'm not in the 'V-shaped' camp. I definitely think we're going to get recovery, but the trajectory of that growth is going to be really low.

The global perception is the U.S. has the most to lose if there's a war in Iraq. That's made the rest of the world averse to U.S. assets. Foreign investors are looking home again.

Everybody has to learn a little more economics than they want to learn, now that we're drawing more and more of a distinction between actual GDP and final domestic demand, which is GDP minus inventories, ... Inventories can surprise. It's hard to make a solid forecast about them, and the Fed said that. I think the market continues to overestimate Fed rate cuts.

Certainly this Christmas shopping season is going to make for a lot of very negative headlines. The concern is that this weakness will be a self-reinforcing phenomenon, but the confidence numbers indicate that may not happen.

On balance, it is a modestly dollar negative set of data. Retail sales growth was a little weaker than markets had expected, with a downward revision to the ex-auto sector.

Policy makers' concern is that we're still only forming a bottom and that the process is still very fragile. Their concern is not for data in December and November...They're concerned about January, February and March, which will show continuing job losses, less spending and less income.

The manufacturing data certainly are positive, but the employment data specifically reinforce the notion that domestic growth is not going be enough to create many jobs.

They could have done more to communicate well with Wall Street. The new people will be much more savvy, more public-relations oriented.

The dollar is largely unchanged. In these holiday markets, I think releases like tomorrow's personal income data are going to be more critical than the backward-looking GDP report.

It's not in my forecast, but it's probable, a quarter from now, if we're sitting in the same place we have been, with some uneven signs of recovery, but no real improvement in payrolls and inflation edging lower -- those are the conditions under which the Fed has cut recently.

What this means is that business leaders are not convinced that strong sales numbers will be maintained on or at the same level.

Whether you're going into business for yourself or not, you're still looking at a very anemic job market.

The trade number at best leaves the dollar where it was and at worst sparks a substantial dollar decline.

The next couple of months will be absolutely crucial. If we can get through this, we're going to have growth that will be consumer-led next year.

You can really think of productivity as magic fairy dust to sprinkle over growth to allow growth without inflation. That's really the way the Fed sees it.

Every time you see a number that shows prices decelerating, immediately you have to think of sluggish re-hiring, ... It means companies will still be closely guarding the bottom line and will be slow to add to labor.

Broadly, the ISM number reflects what we've been saying for some time We're on the road to recovery, and we've seen the slowest growth behind us -- but this recovery is going to proceed in fits and starts. It's not going to be a one-way street.

A lot of people don't understand that the ISM number is not actually an output number. It's the equivalent of consumer confidence, but for businesses. So certainly outlook has improved, but it remains to be seen how clearly that will translate into actual activity.

In a typical recession, you see people... consolidate their domestic balance sheets. Instead, spending has been as robust as before, and that's hurt domestic balance sheets. We're really at a point where the consumer is squeezing water out of a stone. It doesn't provide the ground for a robust recovery.

It erodes the relative interest-rate support for the dollar.

It is a modest dollar negative the trade data combined with the claims data, but the focus this morning is very much on digesting the BOJ and on payrolls tomorrow.

The report is certainly better than in December, but it just doesn't reflect the level of job creation we'd expect to see at this stage of the economic recovery, or the job creation the Fed would need to see to even consider taking that first step towards tightening.

I don't see the scope for the ECB to match the Fed in terms of raising rates and this will continue to support the dollar. The ECB tends to lag the Fed and even if they hike, the yield differentials are still favorable to the dollar.

The underlying state of the economy is on weak footing, and we're going to need further stimulus to keep the recovery on track.

I think it's too soon to call for a bottom simply because history has shown us that with this currency, it's a tough bet.

Consumers will keep us in positive territory, but they're not going to be optimistic enough to fuel economic growth to its potential.

We're not pricing in rate hikes any time soon, and today's data won't change that. Inflation is off the radar screen for policy makers.

I think they'll need to see a lot of job growth, not just one month.

Stocks usually lead us out of a recession, but not this time. That throws in a whole new level of uncertainty about how businesses are going to behave. We don't know if there will be enough business confidence without stocks coming back.

There's a growing effort within the Fed to look for other ways to add liquidity into markets and to sustain the interest-rate-led growth we've had, ... I think they are going to move to a bias to ease policy again, but I'd look for the ease somewhere else. It won't be a rate cut.

We are seeing pretty solid export growth. You are starting to see the U.S. benefit from faster growth in Asia and the rest of the world.

If that's the way the world is, then that's fantastic, because if oil prices go down and the Iraq situation disappears, we're off to the races again. But I think that opinion is at worst naive and at best simply putting on a brave face.

The 'new economy' was a new beast to some extent, and the Fed was too lenient in terms of letting consumer exuberance get ahead of itself. They should have been moderating growth in 1997 and '98.

This shows our big reliance on imports and foreign capital. As the dollar weakens, that becomes a more and more expensive habit. It makes our imports more expensive, makes the trade deficit wider, makes us even more dependent on foreign capital, weakening

We are still seeing some slack in the labor market, in several different places.

In the near term, markets are getting very excited about the idea of the end of quantitative easing, and that's causing the yen to come under some upward pressure.

Today's report was a case of familiar culprits -- apparel prices continue to put downward pressure on inflation, and housing and medical care continue to put upward pressure on inflation.

This was an honest-to-goodness better-than-expected report. There were no special factors in it that made it look artificially strong. The report also indicates that consumer fatigue may not be as severe as we had previously thought.

I still don't expect a double dip into recession, and I don't think the consumer will turn around and stop spending, but I do take that confidence number very seriously.

This was a pretty positive number, with solid increases in output of business equipment and consumer goods.

Interest rates are low, the stock market is higher, and we hear all this talk about a tax-cut package,

Investors take the number seriously so you have to view it as being not very good news, ... But I'm not a fan of it. It's so new, and it doesn't seem to correlate with overall output.